Olivia Rodrigo was the first breakthrough pop star of this decade, a onetime Disney Channel star who set a fresh template for specific, confessional songwriting on a mass scale.<\/p>\n
On billion-stream smashes like \u2018Drivers License\u2019 and \u2018Good 4 U,\u2019 Rodrigo, now 23, built a career on the back of two complementary musical impulses: exasperated power balladry and exasperated pop-punk. On her first two albums, Sour and Guts, her songs had targets; the fury she channelled nailed a frequency that activated a legion of young female fans.<\/p>\n
Now on the other side of what Rodrigo calls her first \u2018\u2018big-girl relationship,\u2019\u2019 the singer-songwriter\u2019s third album, You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love, out June 12, takes a step back and then zooms in. Across 13 songs, Rodrigo assesses an ultimately doomed relationship from beginning to breakup in real-time detail.<\/p>\n
In an interview, Rodrigo discussed the many ways her creative process intersects with the extra-curricular noise of pop stardom, whether its managing relationship drama; accusations of pilfering songwriting gestures from Taylor Swift, her onetime idol; being targeted for the way she dresses; or her willingness to speak up about political and social causes in a way many of her peers won’t.<\/p>\n
Edited excerpts from the interview:<\/p>\n
CARAMANICA:<\/b> This album strikes me as a chronological, structured mini-narrative. Are you writing those things in real time as the experiences are happening? Is that how you apply creativity to a lived experience?<\/p>\n
RODRIGO:<\/b> For the most part it is chronological and in the order in which it happened in my life and it\u2019s the first time that\u2019s happened. I write songs to process my feelings, so every day when I come and I sit at the piano or I go to the studio, it\u2019s like, What is burning in me to say right now?<\/p>\n
COSCARELLI:<\/b> When did you realise you had an ending?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olivia Rodrigo was the first breakthrough pop star of this decade, a onetime Disney Channel star who set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[264],"tags":[143542,143539,143546,18,117,143537,143536,19,143545,17,361,143540,143533,143538,143532,337,143544,143534,143543,143541,143535],"class_list":["post-517957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-android-magazine","tag-best-magazine","tag-digital-magazines","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-free-magazine","tag-free-magazines","tag-ie","tag-ipad-magazine","tag-ireland","tag-magazine","tag-magazine-subscription","tag-magazines","tag-magazines-for-smartphones","tag-magzter","tag-music","tag-online-digital-magazine","tag-online-magazine","tag-online-pdf-magazine","tag-pdf-for-smartphones","tag-pdf-magazine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116690878943508720","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}